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Political Ecology (political + ecology)
Selected AbstractsGlobal Visions, Local Landscapes: A Political Ecology of Conservation, Conflict, and Control in Northern Madagascar by Lisa L. GezonCULTURE, AGRICULTURE, FOOD & ENVIRONMENT, Issue 1 2009Matthew J. Forss No abstract is available for this article. [source] Reimagining Political Ecology edited by Aletta Biersack and James B. GreenbergDEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 5 2007Marlene Buchy No abstract is available for this article. [source] Advancing a Political Ecology of Global Environmental DiscoursesDEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 4 2001W. Neil Adger In the past decade international and national environmental policy and action have been dominated by issues generally defined as global environmental problems. In this article, we identify the major discourses associated with four global environmental issues: deforestation, desertification, biodiversity use and climate change. These discourses are analysed in terms of their messages, narrative structures and policy prescriptions. We find striking parallels in the nature and structure of the discourses and in their illegibility at the local scale. In each of the four areas there is a global environmental management discourse representing a technocentric worldview by which blueprints based on external policy interventions can solve global environmental dilemmas. Each issue also has a contrasting populist discourse that portrays local actors as victims of external interventions bringing about degradation and exploitation. The managerial discourses dominate in all four issues, but important inputs are also supplied to political decisions from populist discourses. There are, in addition, heterodox ideas and denial claims in each of these areas, to a greater or lesser extent, in which the existence or severity of the environmental problem are questioned. We present evidence from location-specific research which does not fit easily with the dominant managerialist nor with the populist discourses. The research shows that policy-making institutions are distanced from the resource users and that local scale environmental management moves with a distinct dynamic and experiences alternative manifestations of environmental change and livelihood imperatives. [source] Is There a Political Ecology of the Sierra Leonean Landscape?AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Issue 3 2001A. Endre Nyerges Corruption and State Politics in Sierra Leone. William Reno. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. 229 pp. Fighting for the Rain Forest: War, Youth and Resources in Sierra Leone. Paul Richards. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1996. 182 pp. Myth and Reality in the Rain Forest: How Conservation Strategies Are Failing in West Africa. John F. Oates. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. 310 pp. [source] Actor-Network Theory as a Critical Approach to Environmental Justice: A Case against Synthesis with Urban Political EcologyANTIPODE, Issue 4 2009Ryan Holifield Abstract:, Recent critiques of environmental justice research emphasize its disengagement from theory and its political focus on liberal conceptions of distributional and procedural justice. Marxian urban political ecology has been proposed as an approach that can both contextualize environmental inequalities more productively and provide a basis for a more radical politics of environmental justice. Although this work takes its primary inspiration from historical materialism, it also adapts key concepts from actor-network theory (ANT),in particular, the agency of nonhumans,while dismissing the rest of ANT as insufficiently critical and explanatory. This paper argues that ANT,specifically, the version articulated by Bruno Latour,provides a basis for an alternative critical approach to environmental justice research and politics. Instead of arguing for a synthesis of ANT and Marxism, I contend that ANT gives us a distinctive conception of the,social,and opens up new questions about the production and justification of environmental inequalities. [source] Political ecology: a synthesis and search for relevance to today's ecosystems conservation and developmentAFRICAN JOURNAL OF ECOLOGY, Issue 2009C. G. Mung'ong'oArticle first published online: 3 FEB 200 Abstract Africa is facing problems of deforestation, desertification, loss of soil fertility, loss of wildlife habitats and biodiversity, and the deterioration of aquatic ecosystems and lack of accessible, good quality water. Governments have formulated policies, enacted legislation and established various institutions addressing these issues. African countries are yet to arrest the environmental problems they are facing, due to, among others, the ineffectual theoretical analysis of the problem of ecosystems degradation. This study argues for the adoption of the political ecological framework in the analysis of sociopolitical sources, conditions and ramifications of ecosystems change and also highlights the explanatory power of this conceptual framework as far as the explanation of the problem of ecosystems degradation is concerned, and shows how it can enable us deal with the multi-layered causality rather than the symptoms of the problem of ecosystems change. [source] The Political Economy of the Ecological NativeAMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Issue 3 2007MOLLY DOANE In Chimalapas, Mexico, nongovernmental actors attempted to integrate campesinos into the discourse and practices of the Western environmental movement. The political economy school of anthropology assumes that cultural identity and practice flow from historical experiences grounded in relevant national and institutional contexts. In this article, I argue that although the movement in Chimalapas drew from the well-developed symbolic toolkit of the environmental movement, it was not able to create a space for local concerns within a transnational agenda that was already fairly well established and inflexible. Political ecology was the hinge of this movement: a political-economic analysis that validated traditional agrarian concerns in Chimalapas but included an environmentalist discourse legible to international funders. In this way, environmentalists in Chimalapas attempted both to create new practices and to link old practices to new expressions of culture and identity. [source] Mutant Ecologies: Radioactive Life in Post,Cold War New MexicoCULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 4 2004Joseph Masco A political ecology of the nuclear age developed through a theorization of "mutation" interrogates the contemporary terms of radioactive nature in New Mexico. As an analytic, the value of "mutation" is its emphasis on multigenerational effects, enabling an assessment of biosocial transformations as, alternatively, injury, improvement, or noise. Cold War radiation experiments, the post,Cold War transformation of nuclear production sites into "wildlife reserves," and the expanding role that biological beings play as "environmental sentinels" in New Mexico are all sites where concerns about "species" integrity may be articulated in relation to radioactive nature. [source] The Political Ecology of Transition in Cambodia 1989,1999: War, Peace and Forest ExploitationDEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 4 2000Philippe Le Billon Over the last decade, forests have played an important role in the transition from war to peace in Cambodia. Forest exploitation financed the continuation of war beyond the Cold War and regional dynamics, yet it also stimulated co-operation between conflicting parties. Timber represented a key stake in the rapacious transition from the (benign) socialism of the post-Khmer Rouge period to (exclusionary) capitalism, thereby becoming the most politicized resource of a reconstruction process that has failed to be either as green or as democratic as the international community had hoped. This article explores the social networks and power politics shaping forest exploitation, with the aim of casting light on the politics of transition. It also scrutinizes the unintended consequences of the international community's discourse of democracy, good governance, and sustainable development on forest access rights. The commodification of Cambodian forests is interpreted as a process of transforming nature into money through a political ecology of transition that legitimates an exclusionary form of capitalism. [source] Development Discourses and Peasant,Forest Relations: Natural Resource Utilization as Social ProcessDEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 1 2000Anja Nygren This article analyses the changing role of forests and the practices of peasants toward them in a Costa Rican rural community, drawing on an analytical perspective of political ecology, combined with cultural interpretations. The study underlines the complex articulation of local processes and global forces in tropical forest struggles. Deforestation is seen as a process of development and power involving multiple social actors, from politicians and development experts to a heterogeneous group of local peasants. The local people are not passive victims of global challenges, but are instead directly involved in the changes concerning their production systems and livelihood strategies. In the light of historical changes in natural resource utilization, the article underlines the multiplicity of the causes of tropical deforestation, and the intricate links between global discourses on environment and development and local forest relations. [source] UNDERSTANDING TRADITIONALIST OPPOSITION TO MODERNIZATION: NARRATIVE PRODUCTION IN A NORWEGIAN MOUNTAIN CONFLICTGEOGRAFISKA ANNALER SERIES B: HUMAN GEOGRAPHY, Issue 1 2008Tor A. Benjaminsen ABSTRACT. In Gausdal, a mountainous community in southern Norway, a conflict involving dogsledding has dominated local politics during the past two decades. In order to understand local protests against this activity, in this article we apply discourse analysis within the evolving approach of political ecology. In this way, we also aim at contributing to the emerging trend of bringing political ecology "home". To many people, dogsledding appears as an environmentally friendly outdoor recreation activity as well as a type of adventure tourism that may provide new income opportunities to marginal agricultural communities. Hence, at a first glance, the protests against this activity may be puzzling. Looking for explanations for these protests, this empirical study demonstrates how the opposition to dogsledding may be understood as grounded in four elements of a narrative: (1) environmental values are threatened; (2) traditional economic activities are threatened; (3) outsiders take over the mountain; and (4) local people are powerless. Furthermore, we argue that the narrative is part of what we see as a broader Norwegian "rural traditionalist discourse". This discourse is related to a continued marginalization of rural communities caused by increasing pressure on agriculture to improve its efficiency as well as an "environmentalization" of rural affairs. Thus, the empirical study shows how opposition to dogsledding in a local community is articulated as a narrative that fits into a more general pattern of opposition to rural modernization in Norway as well as internationally. [source] FIGHTING FIRE WITH A BROKEN TEACUP: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF SOUTH AFRICA'S LAND-REDISTRIBUTION PROGRAM,GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW, Issue 3 2008WILLIAM G. MOSELEY ABSTRACT. Since the rise of its first democratically elected government in 1994, South Africa has sought to redress its highly inequitable land distribution through a series of land-reform programs. In this study we examine land-redistribution efforts in two of South Africa's provinces, the Western Cape and Limpopo. By analyzing a cross-section of projects in these two locales we develop a political ecology of stymied land-reform possibilities to explain the limited progress to date. Given South Africa's ambitious goal of redistributing 30 percent of its white-owned land by 2014 and the incremental and flawed nature of its redistribution program, we argue that the process is like trying to put out a fire with a broken teacup. Our results are based on interviews with policymakers, commercial farmers, and land-redistribution beneficiaries, as well as on an analysis of land-use change in Limpopo Province. [source] ,Amsterdam is Standing on Norway' Part I: The Alchemy of Capital, Empire and Nature in the Diaspora of Silver, 1545,1648JOURNAL OF AGRARIAN CHANGE, Issue 1 2010JASON W. MOORE In the first of two essays in this Journal, I seek to unify the historical geography of early modern ,European expansion' (Iberia and Latin America) with the environmental history of the ,transition to capitalism' (northwestern Europe). The expansion of Europe's overseas empires and the transitions to capitalism within Europe were differentiated moments within the geographical expansion of commodity production and exchange , what I call the commodity frontier. This essay is developed in two movements. Beginning with a conceptual and methodological recasting of the historical geography of the rise of capitalism, I offer an analytical narrative that follows the early modern diaspora of silver. This account follows the political ecology of silver production and trade from the Andes to Spain in Braudel's ,second' sixteenth century (c. 1545,1648). In highlighting the Ibero-American moment of this process in the present essay, I contend that the spectacular reorganization of Andean space and the progressive dilapidation of Spain's real economy not only signified the rise and demise of a trans-Atlantic, Iberian ecological regime, but also generated the historically necessary conditions for the unprecedented concentration of accumulation and commodity production in the capitalist North Atlantic in the centuries that followed. [source] Dialogía y ruptura: la tradición etnogr´fica en la antropología aplicada en Puerto Rico, a partir de The People of Puerto RicoJOURNAL OF LATIN AMERICAN & CARIBBEAN ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 2 2001Manuel Valdés Pizzini The People of Puerto Rico (1956) had an unquestionable academic and intellectual impact on the island. A review of the literature shows that anthropologists and their texts have established a special dialogic with The People, in which we es tablish a distance, for political reasons, but it is also a work that we keep citing and using as an essential source. The relationship between this text and the Puerto Rican anthropologists is a contra dictory one, characterized by the dialectics between ruptures and linkages. There are strong thematic linkages with Steward's text, but the Puerto Rican anthropology also manifests a aipture with those topics, and an engagement of a different set of topics represented in the recent anthropological works (for example, political ecology, urban society, national culture, gender, and racism and ethnicity). This article also presents potential new directions for Puerto Rican anthropology. [source] Perspectives on Global-Change ArchaeologyAMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Issue 1 2007DONALD L. HARDESTY In this article, I explore the characteristics of global-change archaeology as an emerging field of research. Global-change archaeology seeks to document and apply historical knowledge of past human,environmental interactions to the understanding of contemporary environmental problems and management and planning for future sustainability. It takes place within an interdisciplinary research structure and is situated within the explanatory contexts of historical science and humanistic history with close links to historical and political ecology. Both history and agency play important roles in the practice of global-change archaeology. Past human decision making in the context of cultural attitudes and perceptions also has a significant role in the archaeology of global change. [source] Marginalization, Facilitation, and the Production of Unequal Risk: The 2006,Paso del Norte,FloodsANTIPODE, Issue 2 2010Timothy W. Collins Abstract:, Drawing upon insights from the field of urban political ecology, this article extends the critical hazards concept of,marginalization,by incorporating a relational focus on,facilitation. Facilitation connotes the institutionally mediated process that enables powerful geographical groups of people to minimize negative environmental externalities and appropriate positive environmental externalities in particular places, with unjust socioenvironmental consequences. The article demonstrates the utility of a marginalization/facilitation frame for understanding the production of unequal risk based on a case study of the 2006 El Paso (USA)-Ciudad Juárez (Mexico) flood disaster. The case study reveals how uneven developments have produced complex sociospatial patterns of exposure to flood hazards and how processes of facilitation and marginalization have created socially disparate flood-prone landscapes characterized by unequal risks. The paper concludes by outlining how the frame presented helps clarify understanding of the production of unequal risk. [source] Actor-Network Theory as a Critical Approach to Environmental Justice: A Case against Synthesis with Urban Political EcologyANTIPODE, Issue 4 2009Ryan Holifield Abstract:, Recent critiques of environmental justice research emphasize its disengagement from theory and its political focus on liberal conceptions of distributional and procedural justice. Marxian urban political ecology has been proposed as an approach that can both contextualize environmental inequalities more productively and provide a basis for a more radical politics of environmental justice. Although this work takes its primary inspiration from historical materialism, it also adapts key concepts from actor-network theory (ANT),in particular, the agency of nonhumans,while dismissing the rest of ANT as insufficiently critical and explanatory. This paper argues that ANT,specifically, the version articulated by Bruno Latour,provides a basis for an alternative critical approach to environmental justice research and politics. Instead of arguing for a synthesis of ANT and Marxism, I contend that ANT gives us a distinctive conception of the,social,and opens up new questions about the production and justification of environmental inequalities. [source] The Theses on Feuerbach as a political ecology of the possibleAREA, Issue 2 2009Alex Loftus This paper argues that Marx's Theses on Feuerbach offer a tremendous and yet neglected resource for work in political ecology and the production of nature. Whilst not calling for a dramatic shift in the way in which such work is conducted, the paper shows how the Theses offer a firm and concise foundation on which to base the ontological and epistemological claims of work on the politicised environment. Ontologically, nature is a differentiated unity, best understood as sensuous activity or practice. This fits well with Smith's claims that nature is produced, whilst not limiting production to capitalist activity. Environments are thereby made up of everyday activity. Subverting the apparent anthropocentrism of this claim, the paper shows how (as Gramsci recognised) the Theses on Feuerbach have an incipient sense of the socio-natural. Post-humanist critiques of Smith's (humanist) production of nature thesis are thereby disrupted. Production realises a differentiated unity of socio-natural relations. Epistemologically, the paper demonstrates how the Theses push political ecologists to construct knowledge claims from practical activity. An ecological politics thereby emerges from the situated knowledges of different actors. Building on this, the paper argues that Marx's ,notes to himself' give us a sense of possible worlds and possible ecologies beyond the topsy-turvy one we have made in the present. Through the concept of praxis evinced in the Theses, a vision of the engaged scholar activist, committed to learning about the world through changing it (and vice-versa), emerges. [source] A political ecology of violence and territory in West KalimantanASIA PACIFIC VIEWPOINT, Issue 1 2008Nancy Lee Peluso Abstract: This paper uses a political ecology perspective to examine relationships between violence and territory in West Kalimantan, focusing on the violent incidents of 1996,1997 and 1967,1968. Besides a regional account, the paper examines some of the ways residents of one village were drawn into and chose to participate in violence. The author concludes that while regional analyses can identify broad patterns, local analyses enable a greater understanding of both variation and the processes by which ethnic categories are constructed through violence. [source] | ||||||||||||||||||||||